436 ECONOMIC HISTORY
These were pointed out by the London authorities when
they were pressed to purchase and maintain a magazine of
thirty thousand quarters of corn—the expense of erecting
granaries, the effect of amassing so large a store in raising the
price of corn, and the loss of stored-up grain ' by vermin,
shrinking and screening'*. It was also held that public
magazines would be a discouragement to tillage by inducing
fanners to believe that in the long run they would serve to keep
prices at a low level. The function of the corn speculator was
to fulfil the purpose of a corn magazine in storing-up corn.;
and while he shouldered the risks in place of the community,
he was less exposed to the danger of loss. " In private hands,
though the quantity may be, and generally is, as large as it
would be in public magazines, yet it is always circulating—
by many shifted once a month, and by scarcely any less than
three times a year—in consequence of which the corn hath
no time to decay " 2.
And, finally, the apologist for the middlemen denied that
they were responsible for the rise in prices. They were too
numerous to combine for the purpose of forcing up prices:
every advance was quickly known to all the dealers, and the
desire of sharing in the profit soon overstocked the market.
" Quantity and that alone can frustrate all attempts to
engross or forestall. If there be a good crop, or a proper
quantity of grain either at home or from abroad to be got
for the market, no art or scheme can enhance the price of
grain whatever speculative persons may fancy to them-
selves ; and if there be a bad crop and the quantities of grain
be scanty, no art or regulation of Government will keep the
prices low " 3. In the light of these arguments corn-dealers
came to be viewed with more favour. Near the end of the
eighteenth century a committee of the Privy Council not
only concluded that " the inland trade of corn ought to be
perfectly free ", but added : " This freedom can never be
abused "4. Whether its optimism was justified or not in
the case of the corn trade, it is at least certain that the
1 State Papers Domestic, 1631-163$, p. 433 (1632).
1 Smith, Three Tracts en the Corn Trade and Corn Laws (ed. 1766), 14.
* Ibid. 17, 65. 4 Annals of Agriculture, xiii. 360 (1790).